This article is written by Peter Pouliot from Ampere. 

Powers Next-Generation, Sustainable Private Clouds with Unmatched Efficiency

As AI begins to augment traditional workloads, this drives demand for datacenter space, compute resources, and power.  With this burden increasing, the requirement for more efficient computing platforms becomes critical for enterprises and regional or national cloud providers that do not have the resources of the largest cloud providers. The largest hyperscale cloud providers have adopted CPUs based on the Arm architecture as a major component of their infrastructure, both for their own hosted services, and for customer applications.

Simultaneously, concerns around data sovereignty, security, and compliance are driving a resurgence in private and on-premises cloud infrastructure. Organizations want to retain control over their critical data, especially as AI inference agents process sensitive corporate information locally.  These trends combined with increasing use of AI RAG databases create affinity to local infrastructure leading to repatriation and upgrades to existing datacenters.

Finally, recent events in the virtualization space have fomented a wave of software modernization. With new strategies for both containerization and virtualization enabling the adoption of more efficient computing within private clouds a revolution in retrofitting on-premises and bespoke infrastructure is under way, taking advantage of more efficient AI Compute platforms that maximize the computing density in existing or new physical spaces and power envelopes.

CloudStack IaaS Platform 

CloudStack, the robust open-source IaaS platform; ShapeBlue, the world’s largest independent CloudStack integrator; and Ampere Computing, a leader in efficient AI Compute, have collaborated to deliver a leading solution meeting all the requirements above.  Traditional virtualization infrastructure, dense containerization enabling the next generation of AI enabled services, and uncompromising power efficiency are the hallmarks of this solution.  A reference architecture, complete with native Arm support, is available to assist enterprises or clouds in building new modern private clouds using Ampere platforms or integrating them into existing brown field deployments with existing CloudStack deployments.

The ShapeBlue solution seamlessly combines the proven orchestration capabilities of CloudStack with the remarkable energy efficiency and high-performance of Ampere® processors while empowering organizations to build and manage modern cloud environments that are not only cost-optimized but also significantly more sustainable.

Come See Us at the CloudStack Collaboration Conference  

At the Cloudstack Collaboration Conference in Milan Italy, Pete Logan, Distinguished Field Engineer from Ampere Computing will walk the audience through this solution in his talk on November 20, 2025:  Unlock Next-Gen Efficiency: Building Sustainable & Performant CloudStack Environments with Ampere and ShapeBlue.

This session introduces the CloudStack/ShapeBlue/Ampere Solution and Reference architecture as a key tool in delivering superior Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and a significantly reduced carbon footprint for private cloud deployments. It will highlight the technical advancements and specific contributions from ShapeBlue that enable seamless deployment, management, and optimization of Arm-based instances within CloudStack. Additionally showcasing real-world use cases of the reference architecture while demonstrating how production-ready platforms can be used to build scalable, high-performance, and greener cloud services today.

Ampere Technology Use Case: US Signal

At last year’s CloudStack conference, Ampere and US Signal began a collaboration to bring Arm-based technology into their existing CloudStack deployment on a mixed Arm and x86 infrastructure.

“US Signal is excited to explore the integration of Ampere’s Arm-based technology into our OpenCloud platform as we look toward the next phase of AI. Arm architecture is uniquely optimized for AI inference and emerging Small Language Model (SLM) workloads that demand high efficiency, scalability, and lower power consumption. Combining CloudStack’s open architecture with Ampere’s high-performance, energy-efficient compute aligns perfectly with our vision for OpenCloud: enabling customers to run modern, AI-driven workloads with greater density, flexibility, and sustainability. We’re proud to collaborate with Ampere to advance the next generation of open, efficient cloud infrastructure.”

 ~ Daven Winans, VP of Engineering & Innovation, US Signal

To learn more about their integration strategies, check out Daven Winan’s session on November 20“Infrastructure Strategies and Innovation in the AI Era.”

Register for the conference and attend the session to see how Ampere, CloudStack, and ShapeBlue are jointly shaping the future of cloud infrastructure, empowering you to unlock next-generation efficiency and sustainability.

Resources:

• Ampere Computing
• Ampere PDF: ShapeBlue and Ampere Reference Architecture for IaaS Cloud on Arm64 Architecture
• ShapBlue Blog: ShapeBlue and Ampere Reference Architecture